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Rainbow Invaders
Story In the year 3006, evil Rainbow Invaders are traveling from the planet Pacco to Earth. Even though they resemble "ridiculous aliens" from "1980's arcade games", they are evil and must be destroyed. Game play Rainbow Invaders’ basic gameplay seems like a typical Space Invaders game, where Invaders march from side to side in a formation, they fire down at the player, once they reach a screen edge they will drop down closer, and a high-scoring enemy ship will appear overhead several times during a level. However, the game has several features that make it differ from most games of this genre, such as there being no bunkers for the player to take cover under. The player also can cancel out a shot (by default difficulty settings) by firing again (which will cause the first shot to disappear and then be replaced by the new shot), and Invaders will fire "Special Shoots" sic that contain power-ups if the player’s ship catches one of them before it disappears. Being hit by Invaders’ fire will cause the player to lose a ship and the game will end if there are no more ships in reserve. The player also has a shield that can be used briefly for protection though, although they cannot move while it is employed. Power-ups At multiple times during a level, glowing Special Shoots will enable a certain function that will change a feature of the game if the player is able to catch them. A symbol at the bottom of the screen indicates what power-up the Special Shoot carries. These power-ups can only be good from one to 30 seconds or they can be for an infinite time until the player loses a ship, clears a level, or they catch a different Special Shoot in order to cancel out the previous one. Power-ups (player advantage) *Increase ship and shot speed *Invaders won’t fire *Invaders freeze for five seconds *Destroy entire Invader column with one shot Power-ups (player disadvantage) *Invaders move very quickly *All shots become invisible *Failing to shoot an Invader for 30 seconds will cause a random one to appear; also the player’s ability to abort a shot is disabled *Player’s ship will freeze *Player’s shots move randomly *Invaders’ shots move randomly *A random Invader will blink; if it is not immediately destroyed, new Invaders will start appearing *A random Invader blinks; if it is not destroyed before the bonus expires, the player will lose a ship *Ship controls (left/right) get inverted *Ship movements and shots get slowed *Invaders’ shots increase to maximum speed *Invaders’ shots follow player’s ship Difficulty level increases With every four levels until level 27, various features from the game will have an increase in difficulty, such as with every successive level, Invaders will start from a lower horizontal position on the screen, their shots follow a straight path, but will descend at a random speed, then they will later increase speed, their shots start moving randomly, the Special Shoot type changes quickly, and Invaders’ shots will start following the player’s ship. Once Level 21 (and any levels afterwards) is reached, the "Shoot Abort" option is disabled, plus if the player fails to shoot an enemy a random bonus/handicap will start. Controls, console *Start game–Game Reset switch or joystick button *Select game–Game Select switch *Disable aborted shots–Left Difficulty switch on A position *Disable shields–Right Difficulty switch on A position Controls, in-game *Move ship–joystick (left/right) *Fire–button *Shields–down on joystick Scoring *Row one Invader (from bottom)–50 points *Row two Invader–100 points *Row three Invader–150 points *Row four Invader–200 points *Row five Invader–250 points *Row six Invader–300 points *Enemy ship–500 points *Extra Ship–every 20,000 points Trivia *Unlike most other Space Invaders games, if the player gets invaded (i. e. an Invader makes it to the bottom of the screen), the game will not end, although the current wave will restart if the player has any ships in reserve. *Due to grammatical errors throughout the instruction book, "Shoot" is improper English. *The game can be downloaded for free to play on Atari emulators and multicarts or it can be purchased in cartridge form. Links *Buy at Atari Age store *Atari Age page (with links to reviews, screenshots) *Click on the below tabber for a review. tab1= |-| Review= Review Just because something has an old, done to death theme to it doesn't mean it can't still be fun, as I have no problem with Space Invaders-type games whatsoever (obviously, since I started an entire wiki for them, among other kinds of BOTSS games!). However, I didn't find Rainbow Invaders to be very fun. It's great that the Invaders come in several different colors and you have a lot of power-ups (not all of them good though). I really appreciate all the things and time and effort Silvio Mogno put into this (such as the difficulty level increases). Unfortunately with your ship and shot speed being slow, the game just plods along to me, even with the power-ups changing the pace of things. And what's the DEAL with all the misspellings in the manual?! Sure, that doesn't affect game play any, but it just looks really unprofessional. It really needed to be proofread big time. (6/10) (review by Darrylb500) Category:Games Category:Atari 2600 BOTSS Category:Freeware BOTSS Category:Reviews